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Tavi Gevinson: Fashion Blogger & Feminist

Tavi Gevinson discusses starting her own fashion blog which talks about issues of female self esteem as well as style.

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Tavi Gevinson

Fashion Blogger & Feminist

Tavi Gevinson is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of the Rookie Magazine, aimed primarily at teenage girls. Gevinson, who became an online sensation at 11-years-old for her blog StyleRookie, shifted focus to pop culture and feminist discussion and in 2011, Gevinson founded Rookie at only 15 years old.

At age 11, Tavi Gevinson shocked the fashion world when her blog, Style Rookie, became one of the most popular online style guides. A mere four years later, she is a notable and strong voice in the fashion industry. Tavi is currently serving as the Editor-in-Chief of Rookiemag.com, an online publication aimed at teenagers tackling the political and cultural issues of the day.

TAVI GEVINSON: I think it's just kind of alarming, maybe, or surprising for people to realize that teenage girls are much more aware of certain things and they thought.

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I'm 15 years old. I started a blog called "Style Rookie" when I was 11, because I had been reading fashion blogs, and I was bored, and I thought it might be fun to record how the things I like and that inspire me have changed. Some people say that each book teaches you how to live a different way. And I think "Ghost World" was kind of that for me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My sister's always like, you really lucked out, because you started getting into feminism and learning about riot grrrl and everything right before you hit that girls' self-esteem thing where they hit puberty and they're just like--

What's nice is that with "Rookie," it's a good place to write about those things. You are just much more confident when you're a little kid. And then you become a weird in-between.

When I started my blog and, I guess, people started paying attention to it, there was a lot of that "she has no right to be at Fashion Week" or whatever, even though it would be like, I was invited to a show. Once people got mad because I was physically taking up space because I wore a giant bow on my head. And whoever was sitting behind me said something about it, even though I was really short at the time. And so then that became a whole "she has no right to there" thing because I'm not a fashion expert or whatever. People got really mad about a giant pink bow.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I had been watching for a while shows like "Freaks and Geeks," "My So-Called Life." I just felt like there wasn't really anything today that was honest in the same way to an audience of teenage girls or respected their intelligence.

In September of 2011, I started an online magazine called "Rookie" for teenage girls that's less personal. There are lots of other writers. On "Rookie," everything is through a feminist lens, and we're a feminist site. I wrote a post about when you first started noticing other people noticing your body, just cat calls or weird, annoying stuff. And a lot of girls were like, thank you. I didn't know that I was allowed to be angry about that stuff.

Writing about fashion does not make you seem very smart to most people, because they think fashion is frivolous. There are ways to learn things outside of just strict academics. And nobody is like, ah, I wish I spent more time in middle school.